Gettin’ jiggy wit James Hatfield

On 22nd of May this year, a dream of mine came true, when at long last I went to a Metallica concert. It was held in Ramat-Gan, Israel, a 20 minutes walk from my house, and on May – of all the months: especially for my birthday, I guess.

To make things even more festive, I decided I had to print something special to wear. I was about to get a Metallica shirt, like 99% of the audience, of course, but I wanted MY print to be special, at least within the boundaries of the genre.

I was working as a graphic designer at a t-shirt printing store, and so I had a lot of distractions, at least as far as the design was concerned, and couldn’t quite choose from all the exiting printing techniques and options I was surrounded with.
I know I wanted to use this ribs-glow-in-the-dark print we had at the store, and of-course I wanted to add some Metallica into the mix.

I was going to use a photograph of the band, but Google found me something much better to work with:

I wanted to make it more personal still, so I gathered a few of my favorite quotes from the band’s songs, and finally chose one that fitted the most with the picture: “Don’t waste your breath, I won’t waste my hate on you” from “Wasting My Hate” -“Load” album. Oh, and to top it all I simply could not do without a small M logo on the back.

I think the final result turned out different enough from your usual Metallica T, sort of Metallica through a radioactive waste filter. Anyway, I did aim for special, and no doubt special is what I got.

Left to right: Idan, myself, Neta and Ofir, all psyched about Metallica.